Posts Tagged ‘Yahoo!’

Almost as a foil to the suggestions that Google is showing some signs of weakness are those that Yahoo! is making a comeback. On Tuesday the company beat Wall Street’s expectations, leading some to see that the return of Jerry Yang, Yahoo!’s co-founder, might be bringing the light at the end of the tunnel. In a conference call on Thursday Yang laid out three priorities for the company. He wants to see Yahoo! become the starting point for Internet users, the company’s properties become must buys for advertisers, and third party developers begin to use Yahoo! as a platform. BusinessWeek commented on Yang’s goals saying, “Yang is aiming to transform the culture, making Yahoo a place that encourages innovation, faster product development, and increased collaboration with outside Web sites and developers.” However, there are also those that suggest that beating the Wall Street estimates is not the signal of any change. “Wall Street’s expectations were so low that a slight improvement from that looks pretty good,” said Jeffrey Lindsay, a financial analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

Following the lead of its rivals, Google, Microsoft, and Ask, Yahoo will Google, Yahoo! has released an upgrade of its services. According to Yahoo!, “The new Yahoo! Search was designed to better understand user intent and get consumers to the results they are looking for in one search.” It promises improved results and will integrate audio, video and photos directly into the search results. As stated, Yahoo! trails the other major search engines in releasing similar improvements. Microsoft released its upgrade in a few days earlier, Ask.com in June, and Google in May. As the name Google chose, “universal search” implies, search sites are moving toward showing audio, video, and images alongside text in search results. As the convergence is seen in the major engines it brings to mind the idea that the more things change the more they stay the same.